SpokenWord Paris

Beth is British and French. She has performed in theatre, film and TV in France and has been the driving force behind artistic endeavors such as the popular Peacock Palace multi-arts events from 2012 to 2015. She is also part of a team-building troop that runs murder-mystery and casino events, and she is called upon by consultants, companies and individuals for teaching, coaching, translation, interpretation and voiceover services. She is a constant learner-explorer and uses her secure professional base to allow her to pick and choose creative projects which inspire her. These have been mainly theatre oriented in recent years. In 2023 you can find her on stage in Paris and other parts of France in the comedy Jusqu’à ce que l’amour nous sépare by Hugo Le Guen, the theatre dance projects  Vi(e,s) and Les Vivants by Clémentine West, and in her own production Metoo?

https://www.metoo-theatre.com/

https://peacockwanderer.wixsite.com/bethjerviscomedienne

https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-jervis-87434711

Clémentine is passionate about acting. Her life would not be complete without it.  Since formal acting training at the Pygmalion studio in Paris, Clémentine has embodied numerous roles on screen and in the theatre. She directed her first theatrical show Vi(e,s) in 2018/19 and has since expanded the project to culminate in a 9 actor chorale piece. She chooses projects which combine heart and social questioning. She also runs physical theatre and improv workshops for adults and performs regularly around France in several comedy plays with the Montpellier based Compagnie très très drole. 

https://clementinewest.wixsite.com/website

Since 2014 Scott Elder’s work has been published on both sides of the Atlantic as well as having been placed or commended in numerous competitions in the UK and Ireland and shortlisted in the Bridport, Fish, Plough, Aesthetica, and Troubadour Prizes. His debut pamphlet, ‘Breaking Away’, was published by Poetry Salzburg in 2015.  A first collection, ‘Part of the Dark’,by Dempsey&Windle 2017 (UK), and his second, ‘My Hotel’, is forthcoming in Salmon Poetry 2025 (Ireland).  Website: https://www.scottelder.co.uk/

Mia Funk is an artist, writer, interviewer, and creative educator. As the founder of The Creative Process podcast, traveling exhibition, and international educational initiative, Funk has conducted over 1,000 in-depth interviews and painted the portraits of numerous artists, writers, and creative thinkers across the arts and sciences. Its sister program One Planet Podcast focuses on the environment and issues facing people and the planet. The Creative Process aim is to foster cross-cultural understanding and provide a platform that empowers, engages and inspires imaginative inquiry by sharing insights from some of the world’s leading creative thinkers, including winners of the Oscar, Emmy, Tony, Pulitzer and Nobel Prize. Embracing creativity across disciplines, notable guests include directors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, Pritzker Architecture Prize, UNESCO, Earth Day, Smithsonian, Musée Picasso, Grammy Museum, Greenpeace, PETA, Songwriters Hall of Fame, other leading museums and organizations.
Funk’s varied work sees her leading workshops and mentoring students around creativity, critical thinking, environmental ethics, arts and humanities disciplines. Her work appears in public and private collections, including the U.S. Library of Congress, Dublin Writers Museum, Office of Public Works, and culture centers. She has received awards and honors, including the Prix de Peinture from the Salon d’Automne and exhibited in the Grand Palais. She has contributed to various national publications and served on the National Advisory Council of the American Writers Museum and on the advisory board of the European Conference for the Humanities.
www.creativeprocess.info
Podcast: Apple tinyurl.com/thecreativepod Spotify tinyurl.com/thecreativespotify
You can find her art, writing & videos here: www.miafunk.com

Stephen James Smith is an Irish poet, whose work has been seen by millions of people, leading him to perform with people like Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam), Patti Smith and Bono (U2). Stephen has performed at Glastonbury, the Nuyorican Poetry Café in New York, the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris and many more places in between. Follow him online @sjswords or find his poetry here: https://linktr.ee/sjswords

photo by Sabine Dundure

Jo Morrigan Black is a Paris-born poet and visual artist of Irish, French and American nationalities. They bridge seas through poetry and cultural anthropology, investigating migration paths and experiences of liminality. Jo has worked with indigenous leaders in Colombia, left stray feathers in Berlin and stalked the streets of Dublin as a vampire. Their stage performances combine poetry, physical theatre and drag in order to celebrate the queer and the unknowable in each of us.

Kieran Beville is author of Write Now – A Guide to Becoming a Writer (Limerick Writers Centre, 2019). He has had a substantial number of poems and articles published in various newspapers, journals and magazines and four collections of poetry (Revival Press). His book, Pulling Back the Clouds is a short biography of Mike Kelly, collector of the die-cast model aircraft display at Shannon Airport (Limerick Writers Centre, 2020). In April 2022 Beville was appointed Poet Laureate for Limerick

Alex Vellis is a Greek-British poet, producer and playwright from Canterbury, Kent. He holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Kent and has published five books through Whisky & Beards Publishing. Vellis’ work challenges the ideas of hope and home, love and futility, and identity and place. His new book ‘I saw a bird once’ follows the lives of three people as they explore change in a working-class world His work has been used in schools in the Netherlands and in young offender’s institutes in the United States as a way to both display poetry and present a way to better understand our emotions. Vellis has performed both nationally and internationally as a poet, gracing stages in Paris, London, Oxford, and Malta. As well as delivering lectures at universities and festivals on events production, being a working-class artist, and poetry in the larger sphere. Alex has produced the majority of Kent’s poetry events for the last five years, including the online poetry festival (in conjunction with Connor Sansby and co) ‘Winchesterfest’ – for which he gained his second (unsanctioned) world record for producing poetry events. Currently, he is a poetry editor for a publishing house and an axe-throwing instructor.

Jennifer K Dick is the author of That Which I Touch Has No Name (Black Spring Press Group, London, 2022), Lilith: A Novel in Fragments (Corrupt, 2019), Circuits (Corrupt, 2013) and Fluorescence  (University of GA Press, 2004) as well as 6 chap/artbooks. She has worked as a literary editor & reader for Versal (Amsterdam), Upstairs at Duroc (Paris), & The Colorado Review, has taught Creative Writing Workshops for WICE, the Paris Writers Workshop , Kent University’s Paris in The Arts, Strasbourg Write a Story, and guest taught for Naropa and LIU Brooklyn’s MFA programs. She directs the UHA English Dept., curates Ivy Writers Paris & co-organizes “Écrire L’Art” at Kunsthalle Mulhouse Centre d’Art Contemporain. Originally from Iowa, residing in France for over 20 years, she has also lived in Norwich, England, Colorado, and Massachusetts, and traveled extensively. Thus she is interested in writing about place and displacement, and global polyphony—that is, the connections we have to our language as it slips in and out of the languages of others. Recent projects include completing the manuscript Shelf Break, the writing of a chapbook of shipwreck-related poems for Tupelo’s 30/30 project. She is on the panel judging the 2023 SWAS short fiction contest. For more: Blog: http://jenniferkdick.blogspot.fr

Last week at the Hirondelle was great – great crowd, great poetry.

But unfortunately the Hirondelle has been hit with a large police fine for noise in front of the bar and have decided to stop doing events like ours.

SpokenWord will be back next Monday 23rd Jan, venue to be announced.

Cheers all,

David Barnes